PLEASE EGOSOFT would you FIX the Xenon already??

[Rejected Spavvn]

Thousands of hours of playing, dozens of new universes I've tried to keep the Xenon alive but THEY GO EXTINCT despite me trying to SAVE them.

I'm playing budgeted with all stories completed except the one that gets me Astrids. The very minute I get the call from Dal Busta it's time for Tri to go to war with Tel so they both get wrecked and can't throw their fleets at the Xenon. Arg+Ant at war with Ter so they all fight each other instead of the Xenon. Clog the Ter shipyard so they can't make Asgards. Sabotage defenses and hack repair panels on stations under attack by Xenon to give them a better chance of expanding. Spam satellites and monitor Xenon regions for invasions, immediately fly there and destroy attempts by other factions to build stations. BUT STILL THE XENON GET REKT.

Problem #1: They DISMANTLE THEIR OWN POWER PLANTS

This has been reported over and over AND OVER; when a pocket of Xenon sectors is small it will at random completely self destruct by removing all its power plants and try to build new ones that will never be constructed because now they can't get Ecells any more.

Problem #2: They send ALMOST THEIR ENTIRE FLEET of SE ships to DIE

ALSO reported over and over AND OVER; the Xenon regions keep sending their SE ships on complete suicide voyages even ACROSS THE WHOLE UNIVERSE for absolutely NO REASON. Suggestion after suggestion and complaint after complaint about this insanity for YEARS has so far resulted in absolutely nothing being done to fix the problem.

I'm utterly at my wits end here, sunk 200 hours into my latest desperate attempt to get them going but it took FIVE HOURS into a new universe for the entire south cluster of Xenon space to get so badly mangled by Tri that it was far beyond saving. The cluster way out northwest seemed to be doing fine for 100 hours so I stopped checking in on them for a little while, then later found out they dismantled their powerplants and have gotten so bricked I'd laugh if this was merely the first or third or 5th time seeing this exact turn of events, it's unfortunately the 10th or something. The usually fairly robust pocket out in Scale Plate Green did fine (meaning; didn't die at least) for 150 hours thanks to the Teladis being unable to send any significant fleets since almost all the destroyers got shredded by Trinity... but now it's down to THREE lonely damn SE ships trekking all the way through Company Regard for some scraps of ore while the wharf keeps making new SE ships that all GET SENT ELSEWHERE AND NEVER SURVIVE.

I'm doing everything I can to help the Xenons that are supposed to be a threat, even letting trade stations spam thousands of utterly unhelpful microtrades with Katanas to keep my rep with the factions from falling too low when I'm forced to repeatedly go crush their fleets and destroy their stations... but even so the damn Xenon are slowly dying across the entire universe just because I'm stopping them from invading Hatikvah since it almost irreversibly crushes the whole commonwealth economy if they would succeed there. The next 50 hours of desperately fighting my allies to get the Xenon back on their feet will be an absolute nightmare of babysitting... and if I can't pull it off there goes my universe, again.

[Aieonae]

Hahahaha… I can’t help but to agree and I don’t even have a extremely cohesive universe to began with, I split split into 3, did that for paranid, I did cuddle both argon and Antigone to block Terran…in the end it does not matter…the xenon gets extinct call up. I am too looking at a means to revive my xenon… but nope nothing here.

[Bozz 💀]

Xenons have issues since 7.5, a lot of people report it, they seem passive, more than in previous versions.

My current game they lost a few sectors after only 10 hours and all the border sectors are contested and they loosing.

I have never seen this happen so quick and I've played 4.000+ hours.

[Cellar_Cat]

They've been like this since 7.10 for me. Well, technically 7.0, but then they were also bugged so I don't count it.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

Problem #1: They DISMANTLE THEIR OWN POWER PLANTS

This has been reported over and over AND OVER; when a pocket of Xenon sectors is small it will at random completely self destruct by removing all its power plants and try to build new ones that will never be constructed because now they can't get Ecells any more.

Is it v7.5? I've personally made a bug report about Xenon dismantling their PP back in the day and in v7.1 I'm quite sure AI didn't touch a single one for hundreds hours.
On the other hand, considering already fixed bugs are returned in v7.5 I'm not surprised...

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

Problem #2: They send ALMOST THEIR ENTIRE FLEET of SE ships to DIE

Years come, nothing changes...

[SigmaSquadron]

I guess too many people reported getting their universes overrun with Xenon. A shame; you don't make a challenge fun by making it easier.

[Cellar_Cat]

To be fair in early versions the economy was really just trash. Frequently there were a lot of hoops to jump through just to get a ship built as things were stalled so badly.

Now they've buffed it to the point it's more durable and you don't have to be the sole saviour of the non-Terran universe, but it looks like the Xenon were probably always balanced against the original, totally dead economy.

[Doom]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

Thousands of hours of playing, dozens of new universes I've tried to keep the Xenon alive but THEY GO EXTINCT despite me trying to SAVE them.

I'm playing budgeted with all stories completed except the one that gets me Astrids. The very minute I get the call from Dal Busta it's time for Tri to go to war with Tel so they both get wrecked and can't throw their fleets at the Xenon. Arg+Ant at war with Ter so they all fight each other instead of the Xenon. Clog the Ter shipyard so they can't make Asgards. Sabotage defenses and hack repair panels on stations under attack by Xenon to give them a better chance of expanding. Spam satellites and monitor Xenon regions for invasions, immediately fly there and destroy attempts by other factions to build stations. BUT STILL THE XENON GET REKT.

Problem #1: They DISMANTLE THEIR OWN POWER PLANTS

This has been reported over and over AND OVER; when a pocket of Xenon sectors is small it will at random completely self destruct by removing all its power plants and try to build new ones that will never be constructed because now they can't get Ecells any more.

Problem #2: They send ALMOST THEIR ENTIRE FLEET of SE ships to DIE

ALSO reported over and over AND OVER; the Xenon regions keep sending their SE ships on complete suicide voyages even ACROSS THE WHOLE UNIVERSE for absolutely NO REASON. Suggestion after suggestion and complaint after complaint about this insanity for YEARS has so far resulted in absolutely nothing being done to fix the problem.

I'm utterly at my wits end here, sunk 200 hours into my latest desperate attempt to get them going but it took FIVE HOURS into a new universe for the entire south cluster of Xenon space to get so badly mangled by Tri that it was far beyond saving. The cluster way out northwest seemed to be doing fine for 100 hours so I stopped checking in on them for a little while, then later found out they dismantled their powerplants and have gotten so bricked I'd laugh if this was merely the first or third or 5th time seeing this exact turn of events, it's unfortunately the 10th or something. The usually fairly robust pocket out in Scale Plate Green did fine (meaning; didn't die at least) for 150 hours thanks to the Teladis being unable to send any significant fleets since almost all the destroyers got shredded by Trinity... but now it's down to THREE lonely damn SE ships trekking all the way through Company Regard for some scraps of ore while the wharf keeps making new SE ships that all GET SENT ELSEWHERE AND NEVER SURVIVE.

I'm doing everything I can to help the Xenons that are supposed to be a threat, even letting trade stations spam thousands of utterly unhelpful microtrades with Katanas to keep my rep with the factions from falling too low when I'm forced to repeatedly go crush their fleets and destroy their stations... but even so the damn Xenon are slowly dying across the entire universe just because I'm stopping them from invading Hatikvah since it almost irreversibly crushes the whole commonwealth economy if they would succeed there. The next 50 hours of desperately fighting my allies to get the Xenon back on their feet will be an absolute nightmare of babysitting... and if I can't pull it off there goes my universe, again.

You need to report this on egosoft forums, they pay more attention to them.

After 7.1 the usual situation is that any xenon sectors that re not tharka get wiped out. Tharka remains strong, however.

I think Xenon could use more equipment tiers, could spawn ships with mods, and maybe could get more gates that would tie their sectors together.

[Bobucles]

Problem #1: They DISMANTLE THEIR OWN POWER PLANTS

Hilarious. It sounds as though xenon have an internal hard limit on how much infrastructure they can build. That in itself is a good thing, as it places fundamental power limiters that control how deadly they can be. But they probably should be counting completed stations for their infrastructure limits.

Problem #2: They send ALMOST THEIR ENTIRE FLEET of SE ships to DIE

I bet this is a fundamental issue with factions in general and not really a xenon problem. All factions have full knowledge of themselves, and are fairly blind to how they assign ships to tasks. This is usually fine, when a faction is all in one location. This is not fine, when a faction is scattered in a dozen different micro pockets across the galaxy.

Fixing the AI would probably be impossible. It's likely baked in too deep. What is easy, is creating a new micro faction. There are tons of micro factions in the galaxy, the antigone, scale pact, paranid has some, split has some, there are micro factions all over the place.

Just do the same thing with xenon, break them up into micro factions. Turn the southern sectors into xenon core #281, The northern sectors into xenon core #1A2D, and so on. Now they'll stop trying to send mining ships across 20 sectors of hostile space. Each faction has a limit on how much they want to build, and those limits might change due to major story events or player progress. It's not a difficult thing to get sorted on pen and paper at least, though it might take a lot of effort to code in game.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Hilarious. It sounds as though xenon have an internal hard limit on how much infrastructure they can build. That in itself is a good thing, as it places fundamental power limiters that control how deadly they can be. But they probably should be counting completed stations for their infrastructure limits.

It not about limits. Xenon put a PP plot almost immediately after power is put under dismantling and if supplied (what usually happens) it will be built.
I'm leaning towards the thought that the issue lay under "usefulness" of a station criteria. Power plants usually produce lots more Energy Cells than Shipyard/Wharf needs, what means E.Cells often overstocked. Script finds that outcome and initiates station deconstruction because considers the station as needless (its common script for all factions), but there is also the script what ensures each sector with enough star shining should has a power plant and put a plot right away.

[FuryoftheStars]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Problem #2: They send ALMOST THEIR ENTIRE FLEET of SE ships to DIE

I bet this is a fundamental issue with factions in general and not really a xenon problem. All factions have full knowledge of themselves, and are fairly blind to how they assign ships to tasks. This is usually fine, when a faction is all in one location. This is not fine, when a faction is scattered in a dozen different micro pockets across the galaxy.

Fixing the AI would probably be impossible. It's likely baked in too deep. What is easy, is creating a new micro faction. There are tons of micro factions in the galaxy, the antigone, scale pact, paranid has some, split has some, there are micro factions all over the place.

Just do the same thing with xenon, break them up into micro factions. Turn the southern sectors into xenon core #281, The northern sectors into xenon core #1A2D, and so on. Now they'll stop trying to send mining ships across 20 sectors of hostile space. Each faction has a limit on how much they want to build, and those limits might change due to major story events or player progress. It's not a difficult thing to get sorted on pen and paper at least, though it might take a lot of effort to code in game.

I've kind of wondered and thought the same thing. Would this be something a modder could attempt for proof of concept?

[Graf Schokola]

The main problem is that turrets are OOS very weak. The Xenon big ships are sitting ducks now.

[Bobucles]

It not about limits. Xenon put a PP plot almost immediately after power is put under dismantling and if supplied (what usually happens) it will be built.

Of course it's about limits! There is literally no reason to ever dismantle a solar power plant. They work for free, forever. There is no justified reason to dismantle one. But, if your faction has a hard limit on the amount of SPPs it wants to keep around, then it must dismantle a previous facility in order to build a new one. That part is fine. Hard (or soft) limits on a faction are fine. They are justified for game balance reasons.

The main issue, is the jobs are being done in the wrong order. Dismantling an old "defunct" facility is easy. Assembling a new exciting facility is hard. There's no reason to dismantle any previous facility before the new one is complete.

[Geist]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Just do the same thing with xenon, break them up into micro factions. .

This has been suggested many times. And yes this would probaply solve some of the problems. Don't know why they don't do it. Maybe they can't, maybe they don't want to. It could even be for lore reasons if they consider all the Xenon in the game right now being controlled by the same CPU ship.
Who knows.

But what I know is that the game develops mostly the same almost every time. Faulty logic and Atiya get wiped out by ANT and HOP Scale Plate gets wiped out by TEL, Matrix 451 and sometimes MAtrix 9 get wiped out by TEL. Tharkas IV usualy stays in Xenon hands. Emperors Pride gets wiped out by PAR.

Rhy's/ Matrix 598 usualy survive and ZYA loses Family Kritt and Zhin to the Xenon.
Tharkas Cascade main cluster stays strong as long as you do not do the work for the other factions and kill them off or lock them in with gate defences. Getsu fune gets takeb by ANT or TER fighting off the Xenon in that area.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

The main issue, is the jobs are being done in the wrong order. Dismantling an old "defunct" facility is easy. Assembling a new exciting facility is hard. There's no reason to dismantle any previous facility before the new one is complete.

Dismantling shouldn't happen at all. At least for 99% instances. And for rest 1% in-game AI isn't competent enough to handle properly.
The issue was fixed and if OP is right its back now. What means devs use old chunks of code without recent adjustments. And that is utterly sad.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

But, if your faction has a hard limit on the amount of SPPs it wants to keep around, then it must dismantle a previous facility in order to build a new one. That part is fine.

Its fine only for species factions, because of huge ware assortment. Xenon produce 1 single ware. They don't need to check if it matches market purpose.

[Gibbo]

They need a sector that we cannot reach, but they can keep pouring out of. Maybe have a plot to eventually shut down this gate of doom?

I noticed they got weaker in the beta. Couldn't even overwhelm ZYA.